Val3ntia wrote:shazzy - Does that walk-through apply only to Macs? I'm on Windows XP. Windows Media Player keeps telling me I need Xvid or DiVX, but everyone else says not to edit with that stuff. So I really don't know what to do - sorry for my total and (I'm sure) annoying ignorance. Dx

It's easier on Windows because people have already written <a href="/guides/avtech">guides</a> specifically tailored to Windows.

By all means get the codecs so you can play those files back, but don't edit with those files -- <a href="http://www.amvwiki.org/index.php/DivX_Editing">here's why you shouldn't and how you can get around it</a>.

shazzy wrote:I wrote a whole tutorial on the pre-editing conversion process for the Mac. You'll want to read all the pages in the Concept section. Yes, it will take some time, but making AMVs has a learning curve.

URL down. . .

shazzy wrote:Okies, I'm going to walk you through this. Do me a huge favor though, and use capitalization and punctuation when you write.

1. Download MPEG Streamclip.2. Open MPEG Streamclip once it's installed. 3. Drag your ORIGINAL anime source file (not your movie, not anything you've converted, the original anime movie/series you started with) into the main window. Here's an example:

4. Go to File>Export to Quicktime

5. Copy what I have in the window below. You want Apple Motion JPEG A as your compressor, at 50% quality, 640x480 as your frame size, 29.97 in the frame rate box, and everything else UNCHECKED.

This may not be perfect, but it will do for now. We can fix other problems later. IF YOU WANT FURTHER HELP FROM ME, EXPORT WITH THE EXACT SETTINGS IN THE PICTURE BELOW.

Now hit the Make Movie button.

Open up your new file that MPEG Streamclip just converted. Let me know how it looks. If you can, take a screenshot (CMD+SHIFT+3) and post it.

This has been a great help . . .finally i have editable video in my FCP. . . however what can i do about the interlacing? The video has horizontal line skips i guess would be the best way to describe it i'm guessing? or did i miss a step due to the missing pics?

What are the recommended codecs to have installed for mac? if you know where to find them that'd be helpful too. Thanks again for helpin the NooB'z.

Dynamics wrote:This has been a great help . . .finally i have editable video in my FCP. . . however what can i do about the interlacing? The video has horizontal line skips i guess would be the best way to describe it i'm guessing? or did i miss a step due to the missing pics?

What are the recommended codecs to have installed for mac? if you know where to find them that'd be helpful too. Thanks again for helpin the NooB'z.

Pro tip: Pre-processing sucks hardcore on the Mac - I wrestled with Shazzy's guide for about a week before I gave up trying to deal with video that had field-switching after EVERY SCENE.

Here's my advice, if you have a Windows machine: IVTC/Deinterlace/Whatever your footage in Windows. Do your filtering there, make it all nice and pretty with AVISynth, make clips, have a ball. Then, make your clips Uncompressed AVI, copy them to your Mac, and either convert them to a lossless editable codec, or just leave'm as-is and edit. Quite frankly, nothing currently available on OSX even holds a candle to the AMVApp - MactheRipper won't let me rip individual chapters, CineTools is a pain in the ass, and don't get me started on MPEGStreamclip and the rest.

Of course, if you don't have a Wintel machine to use, then just read Shazzy's guide from start to finish, accept that you'll only completely deinterlace your video if the Gods smile upon you, and good luck.

Dynamics wrote:This has been a great help . . .finally i have editable video in my FCP. . . however what can i do about the interlacing? The video has horizontal line skips i guess would be the best way to describe it i'm guessing? or did i miss a step due to the missing pics?

What are the recommended codecs to have installed for mac? if you know where to find them that'd be helpful too. Thanks again for helpin the NooB'z.

Pro tip: Pre-processing sucks hardcore on the Mac - I wrestled with Shazzy's guide for about a week before I gave up trying to deal with video that had field-switching after EVERY SCENE.

Here's my advice, if you have a Windows machine: IVTC/Deinterlace/Whatever your footage in Windows. Do your filtering there, make it all nice and pretty with AVISynth, make clips, have a ball. Then, make your clips Uncompressed AVI, copy them to your Mac, and either convert them to a lossless editable codec, or just leave'm as-is and edit. Quite frankly, nothing currently available on OSX even holds a candle to the AMVApp - MactheRipper won't let me rip individual chapters, CineTools is a pain in the ass, and don't get me started on MPEGStreamclip and the rest.

Of course, if you don't have a Wintel machine to use, then just read Shazzy's guide from start to finish, accept that you'll only completely deinterlace your video if the Gods smile upon you, and good luck.

Y'know what? Considering all the stuff you still cannot do (properly) on a Mac for video, I'm surprised at why many professionals still use it.

Willen wrote:Y'know what? Considering all the stuff you still cannot do (properly) on a Mac for video, I'm surprised at why many professionals still use it.

I don't really think that what we do (viz. ripping DVDs, filtering them, and editing them) has anything to do with what professionals use Macs and FCP for. The NLE AMVing scene really evolved with Wintel/Premiere (because it's cheaper) and so that's why a majority of support is based around Windows.

I'm not at all trashing my MBP as an editing system - I've done some WONDERFUL things in Motion and I look forward to really rolling on editing this video, but unless the likes of trythil, Zarxrax, etc decide to suddenly focus intently on making apps for Universal (the odds of which are somewhere between slim and none) that will help the few AMVers using the OS out, you're better off using each system for its strengths.

I use DVDxDV for selecting clips from a ripped VOB file. The quality can be pretty good. Now, I'm a newbie so I'm sure I'm getting all sorts of things wrong, but it seems pretty okay to me. I've tried importing uncompressed MOV files converted from the VOB, and I really couldn't see much difference in quality.

Willen wrote:Y'know what? Considering all the stuff you still cannot do (properly) on a Mac for video, I'm surprised at why many professionals still use it.

I don't really think that what we do (viz. ripping DVDs, filtering them, and editing them) has anything to do with what professionals use Macs and FCP for. The NLE AMVing scene really evolved with Wintel/Premiere (because it's cheaper) and so that's why a majority of support is based around Windows.

I'm not at all trashing my MBP as an editing system - I've done some WONDERFUL things in Motion and I look forward to really rolling on editing this video, but unless the likes of trythil, Zarxrax, etc decide to suddenly focus intently on making apps for Universal (the odds of which are somewhere between slim and none) that will help the few AMVers using the OS out, you're better off using each system for its strengths.

I concure ... I use a Final Cut Studio (I LOVE motion), but I would never suggest someone use it to edit amvs (at least at first). You have to do alot of experimenting just to get started (damn learning curve).

elvirasweeney wrote:I use DVDxDV for selecting clips from a ripped VOB file. The quality can be pretty good. Now, I'm a newbie so I'm sure I'm getting all sorts of things wrong, but it seems pretty okay to me. I've tried importing uncompressed MOV files converted from the VOB, and I really couldn't see much difference in quality.

Yeah, and for all I know you're right, but that's an $80 program according to the website for all the functionality you need (including 3:2 pulldown removal). My point is that all of the pre-processing/post-processing stuff that works wonderfully in Windows, all (or most) open-source freeware, either costs money on OSX, doesn't work well if it's freeware, or just doesn't exist period.

elvirasweeney wrote:I use DVDxDV for selecting clips from a ripped VOB file. The quality can be pretty good. Now, I'm a newbie so I'm sure I'm getting all sorts of things wrong, but it seems pretty okay to me. I've tried importing uncompressed MOV files converted from the VOB, and I really couldn't see much difference in quality.

Yeah, and for all I know you're right, but that's an $80 program according to the website for all the functionality you need (including 3:2 pulldown removal). My point is that all of the pre-processing/post-processing stuff that works wonderfully in Windows, all (or most) open-source freeware, either costs money on OSX, doesn't work well if it's freeware, or just doesn't exist period.

The problem with that program is it doesn't deinterlace, meaning that you will need to send it through a deinterlacing program (Like the ones on Shazzy's site) ... or deinterlace in your timeline ... but to do this you will need to by a filter package like Nattress Film Effects (which I like alot) http://www.nattress.com/ for the native deinterlacing filter in FCP and Motion suxs.

kittehpawz wrote:I jsut got a mac form my dad its a g4 and its like not the newest version of osx so nothign seems to work right wiht it x.x; Anyways i got final cut pro 4 but for some reason after i import anythign its like "unrendered" when i try to play it >> Then when i try to render it it says like 13 hours remaining Dx; Is there any way I can fix this? D:

The biggest problem is there's no lossless conversion. It only supports ffmpeg's codecs, and the only lossless one on that list is Huffyuv. So until the Huffyuv Quicktime component is finished, don't expect to edit any Huffy files in Final Cut.

In other words, if you're really dying to use TDeint, you can run it via a Mjpeg conversion then convert that to something lossless for editing.

And speaking of Nattress Film Effects (there's also a deinterlacing plug-in that comes with Final Cut), the easiest way to deinterlace DURING editing is sequence nesting. Do not kill yourself by applying the deinterlace filter to each clip. Edit your whole thing, then nest that sequence in "deinterlace" sequence. That will apply the filter to all your clips at once. I can show you how to do that if you need me to.